The Last Story Review

Full of gags, bawdy humour and pratfalls, The Last Story has got charm to spare.

Some critics would have you believe that the JRPG is stagnating into irrelevance, but recent entries show a genre in rude health, as developers consistently experiment with the form. Atlus's Radiant Historia offered several finely-tuned twists on established standards, while tri-Ace's inventive - if overlong - Resonance of Fate toyed with unusual structure and combat systems to promising effect. And whatever you think of Final Fantasy XIII and its follow-up, you certainly can't accuse Square Enix of being unwilling to change.

Best of the recent bunch, however, was Monolith Soft's Xenoblade Chronicles, a beautiful sprawl of an RPG set in a mesmeric world and bolstered by fine combat mechanics. Challenging Skyward Sword for the best Wii game of last year, it left a tough act for any JRPG to follow. That The Last Story doesn't quite match up isn't much of a criticism; few games could. That it comes close is a laudable achievement.

After an action-packed opening, the pace slows, allowing the player time to get to know protagonist Zael and the group of mercenaries he journeys with. Congregating at a bar, the band talk and drink, and quests are low-key missions. Though events inevitably escalate, these are telling moments in an adventure that feels more intimate than many of its peers. By narrowing the scope, Sakaguchi quickly brings us into the bosom of this likeable band, and there's comforting warmth to the early exchanges.

Then the ante is upped as the game progresses in short episodes that maintain a strong sense of forward momentum. Across the first half-dozen of these, the game's battle systems are sensibly drip-fed. At first it's all fairly simple real-time action: push the analogue stick in any direction when you're close to an enemy and Zael will swing his sword accordingly. To maximise your attack effectiveness, however, you'll need to get behind enemies to deal extra damage, or better still, attack them unawares. The best way to do this is to hide behind walls or pillars and isolate a single enemy by luring it over with an arrow. As it inquisitively approaches, you can leap out of cover and take it down with a powerful slash. Fools can still rush in, of course, but you then stand the risk of being surrounded, at which point you'll take more damage from every hit. The piecemeal approach is the way to go, then, and it's much more satisfying to deal with a large group in such a sleek, efficient manner rather than a messy cavalry charge.

Meanwhile, Zael's Gathering power allows him to revive downed allies, at the cost of attracting enemy attention. It's a risky strategy in one sense, but by drawing attackers away from your magic user, you can give them the space to cast a magic circle, which you can stand inside to heal or imbue your attacks with elemental buffs. Then there's the Gale ability, which pauses the action, switching to an overhead perspective so you can diffuse magic circles to heal all team members or damage multiple enemies. Later, the top-down view gives you access to a command system if you need to issue more specific instructions, though you can also do this in real-time on occasion, marking weakened masonry and asking your magic user to bring it down onto larger or grouped enemies.

Every battle feels like a set-piece of sorts. Naturally, some are bigger and more dramatic than others, but it offers a variety of skirmishes: one minute you'll be fighting a large number of small enemies in an open-plan environment, the next you'll battle a large boss in the confines of a small room. Sometimes you'll need to use stealth to stop low-level characters alerting others; then you'll have a one-on-one swordfight. The character roster doesn't change a great deal - you'll get a few new additions to the team but in the main they're chosen from the same squad - but the party size and makeup changes regularly, forcing you to mix up your approach and to really learn the intricacies of the battle system to get by.

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User Comments

I find nothing wrong with RPGs that fall back on the standard plot, because I place much greater emphasis on HOW than WHO or WHY. As long as the dialogue isn't lifted from the "Big Book o' Clichéd Phrases", then it doesn't really matter that I am once again saving the world from the Big Bad. In fact, one could argue that enforcing popular tropes engenders a particular mindset in the player, and is therefore to be encouraged to help with immersion.

Nice review, and it really is a shame that titles like this appeared so late in the life of the Wii. Had it been out at launch, we might not have had to endure 5 years of "OMG THE WILL IS JUST KidDY WAGGLE SHOVELWARE" from our ever-vigilant internet guardian brethren.